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Bram Cohen

Fri, Feb. 22nd, 2008, 09:48 pm Air Bubbling

Dyson vacuums work on the principle of cyclonic separation, which has long been used to get sawdust out of the air, and was only with dysons applied to vacuums.

The limitation of cyclonic separation is that it can't get rid of particles less than some size from the air. A technique which could remove all particles would be to bubble the water sucked in by a vacuum cleaner through some water. That would cause all the particulates (and some noxious gases) to get dissolved in the water, which could easily be removed when you were done cleaning.

My suspicion is that this technique would require a lot of power to force the air under water, but that it would be quite effective. It might also work well as a standing system in a house, by having an air purifier which is constantly sucking up air from around a house and bubbling it through a central water tank, and periodically flushing the tank.

I use such a thing. The maintenance is not trivial, still tolerable once a week. I was dreaming about something low-power constantly-working and noiseless to instantly clean the air, but I am not aware of anything commercially available.

What about spraying droplets of water into the center of the separator? Water and dust could come together into drops of mud that would be large enough to collect. Another approach would be to put an electrostatic precipitator after the cyclonic separator -- I think some coal-fired power plants do this for ash.

I have a rainbow, that I got used a few years ago. It's at least 15 years old, and the motor just went out. even though a new motor is likely to be over $100, we will probably replace it rather than get a newer model.

Also the model we have is supposedly the original inspiration for r2d2ly

The only problem is that the water needs to be emptied frequently, as it is basically a warm wet bowl full of all the nasty stuff of your floor